


Dawn of Man

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Anal Fingering, Book: The Hound of the Baskervilles, Established Relationship, M/M, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, mention of extreme weight loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:30:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7830421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before the conclusion of the Baskerville case, Watson believes he and Holmes are both in need of distraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dawn of Man

Baskerville Hall seemed a gloomy and inhospitable place. Its towers loomed large and dark against the Dartmoor sky. Its unlit windows glistened black as oil in the night. The inside was no better, littered with Carolean furniture and coats of arms. Everywhere the walls spoke of forsaken ancestors and the duties of nobility. Everywhere, that is, save the bedrooms, which were modern and brightly papered, and, which was of most particular interest for two of the Hall’s occupants that night, very, wonderfully private. For all its melancholy, isolation can be a boon in the proper circumstances.

Holmes was sprawled across the bed on his back. Dressed in spare one of Watson’s nightshirts, his week upon the moor was all the more evident: from every opening in the fabric sprouted impossibly thin limbs. His face, sunbaked and a little wind-blistered, might have looked a bronze death mask over his skeletal frame, were it not for its constantly shifting expression—first frowning, then twisting in thought, now melting into a placid smile.

“I cannot tell you how glad I am for a good mattress after this week. Granite is too firm a bed, even for me.”

“You should sleep well tonight, I trust.”

Holmes’s scoff echoed sharply through the room. 

“Hardly. No, my dear, I do not think I should sleep well until I have ensnared that Stapleton in my nets.”

Watson collapsed next to him with a grunt. The events of the last few hours buzzed in his mind: discovering Holmes and his hideaway upon the moors, the ghastly cry, the death of Selden, coming face-to-face with the man he knew now to be a murderer, and a calculating one at that. It had been a harrowing day, and tomorrow should only prove more so. Though he wanted nothing more than to curl up asleep beside Holmes, his body thrummed with the anticipation of what was to come. What he needed—what they both required, he decided—was a distraction.

“He very nearly bested us tonight, but—oh ho!—we shall have him, Watson, mark my words. Everything is nearly in place. Tomorrow I shall be up with the sun and—what on Earth are you doing?”

 Holmes lifted his head to find Watson lying prone beside him. The doctor had pushed aside the loaned nightshirt and was muttering to himself while his finger tiptoed down Holmes’s side.

“Counting ribs,” Watson paused to answer. “When I left London I could only see two on this side—now I count four. By my estimate, you’ve lost nearly a stone in a single week.”

The tone was reproachful and Holmes looked duly chastised.

“Yes, well… you would, too, if you made a meal of tinned tongue everyday,” he offered by way of explanation.

But Watson did not need an explanation. He had seen the dilapidated hut where his friend had hidden himself away. He had spied the littering of food tins, the holes in what was left of the roof, the cold rock for a bed. He had already surmised the bleak quality of life lived there. Now he was seeing the effects first hand: four ribs visible on each side, lips chapped, skin jumpy underneath his caresses. He pressed a kiss against Holmes’s quivering belly as he shoved aside the nightshirt.

“Watson…”

“Hm?”

“Watson.”

“Hm." 

Clever surgeon’s fingers had made quick work of the ties on Holmes’s drawers and slid them over the curve of more-prominent-than-ever hips. Watson let his kisses march down the stomach, until he could bury his nose in dark curls, and breathe in the warm, oh-so-very-him scent. Holmes, all the while, squirmed in protest. Bit by bit the drawers slid lower, kisses trailing behind on the tops of thighs, then back up along their insides.

Holmes gazed at the ceiling, willing himself to concentrate on the thoughts which swirled through him. Sir Henry must be sent off alone to dine with the Stapletons tomorrow evening. _Watson’s lips along his adductors._ By then, he would need to have his ducks very much in a row. _The warm breath against his skin. That obscene grunt._ But first, of course, someone would have to see about the dead convict. _Fingers circling his—_

“John!”

“Yes?” asked Watson, looking up, terribly doe-eyed and forgivable.

It took a moment for Holmes to remember his complaint.

“…You’re very distracting.”

“Good." 

Cheeky thing. Holmes folded his hands over his chest and tried to look very austere. He raised an eyebrow and managed to ignore, mostly, the hand that cupped his bollocks.

“I am trying to think. Sir Henry’s life is at stake, and ours besides. I believe I’ve made it clear what sort of villain we’re up against.”

“Yes, yes, and tomorrow you need your wits about you.”

“Precisely.”

“But you won’t need them anymore tonight. Might do you good to relax,” Watson insisted, kissing his way back up the detective’s torso: thighs, hips, belly, chest, throat, chin, cheek and—no, not mouth. Not yet. Holmes’s lips trembled in frustrated expectation. Watson grinned at that. “Or would you rather I leave you to your thoughts?” 

That was too much. Lips could be scorned, but not taunted. Hands tangled madly into Watson’s hair. Holmes pulled him roughly into a kiss that spoke of cold, lonely nights upon the moor. Kisses that betrayed a mix of fear and anticipation. Kisses that murmured, _I missed you_.

“Of course, if you’re too busy scheming, I understand,” Watson whispered to the soft flesh behind Holmes’s ear.

Drawers were kicked off, nightshirts, discarded. Holmes laid his hands upon Watson’s shoulders, shoving him—not quite forcefully, but rather insistently—down. 

“As you were, soldier.”

Watson’s lips smiled before retracing their steps, until once again his face could press into the crease of Holmes’s hip. Until he was again nestling into soft curls, drinking in the sharp, peculiar scent of him. He settled between Holmes’s thighs, a hand on each, spreading him a little further. A kiss to either leg, and the muscles trembled. Gingerly, he nuzzled his way towards his bollocks. He traced the curve of them with the tip of his nose as Holmes’s thighs quaked in his hands. As Watson placed a kiss against his sac, Holmes shuddered with a noise which could barely avoid being called a squeak. Watson raised his head, lips pressed together to avoid a smirk.

“Ticklish?”

“A bit.”

Holmes alway grew ticklish when they were apart for long. His skin, it seemed, did not have a good memory for how to be touched. This was occasionally a source of annoyance, particularly when absence filled their heads with lustful ideas, made their blood hot and themselves impatient. Once, when patients and cases and nonsense had separated them for the better part of a month, Holmes grew so sensitive that they spent the first three days of reunion unable to do more than sit on the settee with their legs entwined. It always subsided, eventually. Patience was the key, and tonight, Watson had mounds of patience.

“How’s this?” he asked, running a firm hand along the underside of Holmes’s thigh.

“Better.”

“And this?” The hand slid up Holmes’s side, then down again, moving leisurely and with a heavy touch.

“No objections.” 

“And this?”

With these measured, questioning touches, Watson massaged his way back into the good graces of Holmes’s nerves. As the hand coursed over him, Holmes felt muscles lose tensions he hadn’t known they held. Muscle by muscle, he melted into the other man’s touch. Soon, he did not jump at the kisses, did not mind the grate of a mustache, rather enjoyed the pressure of a thumb against his perineum. When Watson’s tongue dragged along his prick, it was not a squeak, but a moan that escaped his lips.

To Watson, the moan was permission to begin again in ernest. Another lick, from base to tip and back again, and Holmes’s cock was firming up nicely. Holmes glanced down, eager to watch himself engulfed by Watson’s lips. Instead, he caught only a glimpse of them before Watson’s head sunk lower, disappearing beyond the horizon of his pelvis. Watson pushed his thighs back, spreading him further and it was no mystery where those lips intended to go. The brush of a mustache just behind his bollocks confirmed it.

“Hold these, please,” instructed Watson, giving Holmes’s thighs a squeeze of clarification.

Holmes readily obeyed, hooking his hands behind his knees. It was an odd feeling, to be so exposed—odder by far than Watson’s tongue wriggling against his arsehole. The wriggling was oddly not odd. It was blissful. It was divine. He liked the slippery feel of lips and tongue. He liked the pressure of Watson’s nose against his perineum. He liked the way Watson’s hands hooked around his hips to hold him steady. He liked, especially, that he knew he oughtn’t like it.

“You’re depraved,” Holmes said, half to Watson, half to himself—it was a weak protest, at best.

Watson responded with a broad lick, from arsehole to bollocks. He could hardly explain it, but Watson had always thought Holmes’s bollocks to be a marvel. He drew his mouth over them, tongue exploring the loose, tender skin. Once more, Holmes squirmed beneath him, this time from pleasure. Watson gave a gentle suck first to one side, then the other, before returning to his previous aim.

A bit more wriggling and he was working his tongue past the ring of muscle. Every thrust of his tongue yielded a little more give. The hips in his hands began to buck eagerly, demandingly. Watson’s prick swelled with envy and ached with neglect. He ground himself against the mattress, pausing his tongue to wet a finger in his mouth. With nothing but saliva to slick the way, he could not manage more than a fingertip, but tonight a fingertip was enough. Holmes’s hands abandoned their post, and his legs fell against Watson’s shoulders.

“Oh, fuck!” Holmes cried, and from the muffled tone of it, Watson guessed where the hands had gone. 

Watson propped himself up on one elbow, fingertip still swirling inside the other man. As predicted, there was Holmes with his face buried in his hands. A flush was visible between his fingers, running from forehead to sternum. There was no question of his cock’s stiffness now; it swayed triumphantly in time with the movements of Watson’s finger. A bead of pre-ejaculate welled in his slit and Watson leaned up to lick it away. 

“How’s this?” he teased.

Holmes lowered his hands to reply: “More—please, more.”

“More what?”

“ _Fuck me_ more,” growled Holmes, muscles pulsing around Watson’s finger to make himself quite understood.

“With what help? I’m afraid we aren’t well supplied.”

“Why not?” asked Holmes rather too petulantly. He took himself in hand and began to work his cock in idle strokes.

“I didn’t exactly expect to need petroleum jelly alone in the country.”

“You and I have very different ideas of how to spend a week in the country, then.”

Watson snorted, all the while working his finger inside him. A bit of renewed lubricant in the form of the occasional lick, and he was nearly to the second knuckle.

“Oh yes, and I suppose you left a whole pot behind in your stone hut, hm? Ought we to dash back and get it?”

Holmes let Watson’s hand replace his own, shaking his head against the mattress.

“I was living as an ascetic. I spat in my hand.”

“As all good ascetics do,” agreed Watson, before guiding the tip of Holmes’s prick between his lips. He curled his finger up to brush, just barely, against Holmes’s prostate.

“God, that’s lovely.”

Watson merely hummed around his mouthful by way of reply. He bobbed his head, free hand gripping the base of Holmes’s shaft. His mouth watered to taste him, his sucking accompanied by vulgar, slippery sounds that set fire to Holmes’s blood. Watson worked his finger in and out of him while he could, and when friction proved too much, he still managed to press against his spot, to feel Holmes’s muscles pulse around him.

Long fingers tangled into Watson’s hair. Sighs turned to stifled moans and then to whimpers. Watson sped his mouth, leaned deeper into each swallow. His own hips thrust against the bed in time with these motions. The fingers in his hair tightened, the body beneath him seized, and the muscles of Holmes’s arse caught his finger. Watson eased his head back enough to taste Holmes’s spending. He stayed there, hand gliding along Holmes’s prick, finger trapped, until Holmes relaxed, his final whimper dissolving into a sigh.

Watson raised himself to his knees, his own forgotten erection bobbing heavily above Holmes’s stomach. The head was slick and leaking; Holmes amused himself to imagine the spot it’d left on the coverlet. What a surprise come washing day. His fingers ran along Watson’s arms and as Watson took himself in hand, Holmes watched with hungry, if drowsy eyes. Those eyes, pale, piercing. Holmes looked to Watson’s face and held his gaze, if for no reason than he loved to hear Watson’s breath catch when he did.

“Come here,” Holmes mumbled, dragging his teeth along his bottom lip. He intended to repay the favor in kind.

“No—no—just let me look at you—ah!”

Watson leaned over him on one arm, the other speeding along his prick in rough, reckless strokes, and Holmes knew how terribly close he was. Very well; to be looked at was no hard task, and it suited his post-orgasmic state well. Holmes stretched against the sheets. He could nearly feel Watson’s eyes upon him, lingering over all their favorite spots: the dip of his collarbone, the taught plane of his stomach, the sinewy line of his neck.

Watson thought of Holmes alone in that ruin of a hut that had once been home to some Neolithic man. In his lust, he imagined them there, together. Taking each other as wild men, carefree and brazen upon the moor. _Holmes’s hands caressing down his side, along his forearm._ He pictured Holmes and himself sprawled beneath the stars, naked on a warm night. _Holmes’s head lifting to kiss him, to rest their foreheads together._ Hand in hand across the _—Holmes’s eyes, his lips, his smell, his—_ he came with a gasp, spurting across Holmes’s belly.

He stroked himself until the last thrill shuddered through him. Holmes held him as he caught his breath, reminded him not to collapse against him just yet. The two men looked down at the cloudy streaks which decorated Holmes’s stomach. A beautiful arrangement, but it would turn sticky and stubborn before long. Watson shifted on hands and knees, dipping his head to lick away the mess. A gentleman to the last. 

“Whose tastes better?” asked the ever-curious Holmes.

“Well,” Watson began, kissing his way from navel to the sleepy smirk on Holmes’s face. “Yours is sweeter.”

Holmes nodded very sagely, as though this might secretly be yet another obscure field of expertise. “That would be the tinned peaches.”

“That can’t really make a difference, can it?”

“I read some monograph or other that suggests it _can_. I suppose I never thought much about it, but it seems sensible enough.”

 A chuckle interrupted the mustachioed kisses along Holmes’s jaw. “Imagine convincing a benefactor to support _that_ research.”

“Perhaps you need only give them a demonstration of your methods.”

“And someone published it?” asked Watson, ferreting his way beneath the covers. “I mean, some man walked into a printers and said, ‘Please run me off five hundred copies of this paper about me tasting other men’s seed’?”

“I believe…” Holmes joined him between the sheets, taking rather more pillows on his side of the bed than was equitable. “..that he only experimented upon himself, with the excuse of concern over fertility or some nonsense. Perhaps he meant it, but that’s certainly _not_ why I read it.”

“Now who’s depraved?”

“I am. Utterly.”

Watson laid along Holmes’s side, arm about the detective’s waist, head nestled above his shoulder. As boney as he was, Holmes did not feel fragile. He was solid, tendinous, and he smelled wonderfully of sweat and debauchery.

“I did miss you, you wicked thing.”

Holmes kissed his forehead. A long arm stretched to put out the lamp. The fire in the grate burned low and cast the faintest orange shimmer along the baseboard. Holmes allowed himself, briefly, to consider a week spent here, in Watson’s arms, in this solitary house, instead of shivering in the damp upon Dartmoor.

 “I missed you as well,” he admitted, his voice thick with a self-pitying regret.

Watson did not mistake Holmes’s tone, for he, too, had been picturing the last week lived over with the detective’s presence. He had toiled thinking Sir Henry under his sole protection, for once himself in the center of things. All the while, Holmes lingered like an anxious parent just over the tor. He was still bitter to have been so deceived. His sleepy mind did not prevent a disparaging mumble of: 

“I wish you trusted me.”

“John.”

“I do. You could’ve trusted me.”

“…John,” Holmes repeated, shifting to look at him.

Holmes’s face was serious, imparting. The arms which wrapped around the doctor gave him a squeeze. Grey eyes begged him to consider where they were, _how_ they were, at the moment. To be discovered like this, naked in another man’s arms, would be disastrous for them both, but ruinous for Holmes. A doctor was a profession always in demand, and a man with a medical degree could remake himself a dozen times over—a new town, a new name, a new practice. But Holmes… for Holmes, his reputation was his career. What should he do if he were to lose it? 

“I trust you with my life,” Holmes said soberly, and Watson could not doubt the truth of it. “I am sorry I deceived you. I did what I thought best… I am sorry.”

Watson nodded silently. He did not know if one could forgive while still feeling slighted, but he did. He wrapped himself more resolutely about Holmes, hungry for closeness and affection. Once more, his thoughts turned to the ruin upon the moor. Had those early inhabitants loved as they did? Had two Neolithic men ever laid each other down out on the heath, covered in nothing but moonlight? Had they lived together within their stone hut, unashamed of their union?

“Sherlock?”

Watson raised his head to ask Holmes some question which lingered in his mind, but Holmes did not stir at the sound of his name. In spite of his earlier protestations, he was already asleep. This too, Watson reflected, was a sign of trust. He laid back against the pillows, closed his eyes, and slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Set during HOUN, in the middle of Chapter 13, for those who want to follow along at home.


End file.
